What do they teach them

At these schools? Yup - it's been a while. Ich bin sehr mude (sp?). Friday is Christmas Carol - we're pretty much nearly there with everything - although my actors' energy is lowish now - but I'm hoping that being at the place with all the ansilary bits will give them the jolt they need. So...there's that.

I've had a few good ideas for blogs - and I'd've loved to have blogged them, but pretty much every moment has been filled up with something of the following:

Christmas Carol. And Christmas Carol. And Christmas Carol.

Christmas Carol video promo. Fa la la la laaaaaaaa!

Getting together the other DVD's and fighting with my computer over DVD-burning for various projects and.... Dumb computers.

Grading and giving quizzes and finishing Buddhism and being very sad that some of my students did very poorly on what should have been a no-brainer test...which means that I'll have to have them do an alternate version of identifies. *sigh* Alrighty, there we are.

Working on King of Fools - thank God for Sh. who gives feedback!

And most recently, making a top hat that we're ending up not using. *sigh* But it was an interesting exercise - I'll have to find a place to use the hideous thing. It's always good to have an extra ugly hat about.

Oooh! I finished the attic - or rather, made it rather better, with wunderbar Peter's help. Found several dresses that I didn't know I owned. They need ironing and washing and in one place dry cleaning - but they're possibly usable for "King of Fools." We'll see.

Ah yes - and in the "necessity is the mother of invention" files, I wrote a scene today to cover up Scrooge's costume change and it's looking pretty good. Bless the actors who took on extra lines.

Oh, as always - there is much to write and this is not it at all. (That is not what I meant at all!) But all my writing has been bent towards plays - I'm finally coming to terms with the thought that I'm a playwrite as much as anything else - and all my editing towards the same (although I'm nearly done with Brigadoon - literally two scenes and the bows) - and why is it that when I come on this thing the sentence is destroyed?

I shall leave me with this thought: turtlenecks cover a multitude of chins.

Mood: Not quite the "What have I forgotten?! What have I forgotten?!?!" state I was in yesterday, the day before Hell week began but....
Music: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - the movie, not the soundtrack. Yaaay for $0.99 overnight rentals!
Thought: I am a loverly bunch of cocoanuts, diddily dee. Actually, last night I was entirely TOO full of thoughts. I could barely get myself to sleep. I started thinking about the prologue to King of Fools and then after going over some dialogue that I liked and recording it for future transcribance, my brain switched to the cover scene I wrote and gave to my actors today, and then it flit over briefly to Wallace's Will (little more than a, "Yes I think I might do that next year after all") and then from there it settled for quite a bit on revising Nutcracker possibly for next year's Holiday Stroll. Familial unit laughs at me for always putting several more things on my plate as soon as I reach hell week (that's been their phrase for several days now - oh, yes, it's hell week...well, naturally, it's hell week...ugh, yes, it's hell week). But, as perverse as it seems that I start planning for the next several plays in the very week that I'm going nuts over finishing the current one, it also makes sense - it gives me something to look forward to, it keeps me going when I'm in the dregs of this one, it distracts me from the problems I have to face, while at the same time serving as a sort of goal - and "impossible star" if you will. Right. There you go - rambling randominity. Off to bond with the shower. Oh, the glories of indoor plumbing!

Today I look like

A giant, fuzzy, yellow duckling. Yup! That's me!

Cold is receding - in my body, not the air - but the cold that is advancing (or rather, has advanced and plopped itself down on our corner of the world) has proven wonderful for getting last minute shots of snow falling for the Christmas Carol promotional video - which trailer I will post here in low-res once it's finis, and this sentence which I will end before I incur greater red-pen wrath.

Talent show next weekend. Can it be? And still so much to get together for Christmas Carol. It'll come together (it's a mystery!) - but there's tidying up bits that I need to do yet. The promo excites me, though - it's a nifty idea to have a video trailer for a play. Why don't more plays do so? (Heck, why don't plays do so? The most they bow to is the occasional taped performance and the limited Tony award rendition. Paugh.) So film is a different medium - d'accord. Use it!

My passion is spent slightly. Was upstairs singing (or torturing, your choice) to Jules such off-the-cuff songs as "You're My Highlighter" (Some highlighters are pink, some yellow, some blue/But the only highlighter I want is you!), "Ventilation Ducts" (I'm going, I'm going, I'm going through the ventilation duct to your heaaaaaaaaart!) and a Chinese Communistic song about rain droplet noises, which didn't come off as well as the other two. Mucho fun to come up with silly songs! And now, I am waning.

Which brings me to the crucial question: Where Is Finding Neverland (stinking) PLAYING?!?!? Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-ha! Johnny! Peter! Woe! (Or our Belle exclaiming, "Oh happy day!" Odd stuff one gets when one allows students the run of a video camera.... %)

Anywho - off to answer mail. Being under the weather this week has put me off doing much that needs to be done. And - sadness - for the missed opportunity to see Mr. Dougherty's Macbeth. And - tentative joy - for the thought of a children's picture book about a girl who keeps her unicorn safely stowed within her room.

Mood: Where is that tissue box?
Music: Nicholas Nickelby - Rachel Portman Forever!
Thought: Some mark their lives with bookmarkers - some with play seasons. So my colleague was trying to remember when we first met to discuss curriculum, and after some thought I said that it was in mid-July because I was still working on Kiss Me, Kate. That's what I said, but what I thought was, "I met with him in the third week of the reign of KMK, which equals the Gregorian Calendar of mid-July." Odd, eh?

Merrily we roll along

Yesterday...a tree fell on the modulars. Yeah. Teaching Buddhistic meditation techniques of overcoming all obstacles by acknowledging them and then letting them merely exist in peaceful serenity...ha. Nope. When a tree falls on us, we go all Western. %P

Also yesterday...had music lessons downstairs in a generous colleague's classroom (right under the pipes and next to the gym room - phew! Lord love her and bless her olfactories!). And I realized that I was much attached to my room (with the tree partially on it).

Also also wik...Jules and I went out for a (sniff) now-rare night on the town to see The Incredibles which is WONDERFUL and ought to be seen by one and all at outrageous prices, and then to T.G.I.Friday's in Framingham where we chicken fingered and souped and saladed and spoke of nothing in particular.

Cette matinee...I woke at 9ish, decided to read The Grand Sophy for a bit (charming, charming - oh, I want to work on Long Have I Loved Thee!) and then napped for an hour and then got up and am currently getting myself together for a Saturday (Saturday!!!) department meeting re: the curriculum et sundry.

Back still hurting despite a day taken off to make it stop hurting.

Computer still freezing randomly despite multiple anti-virus scans.

Massive winds yesterday that knocked down trees also blew around leaves, littering the streets with golden snow.

We're on Exodus 16 (:36 - an omar is a tenth of an ephah!) and comparing it to John 6. Oh, frabjous day! Calloo callay!

Will be taping rehearsals of Christmas Carol Monday and Tuesday so that I can put together a promo. Got definitive dates and times lined up with Town Hall. Thank God!

D'you know, Czar Nicholas Alexander II, the last Czar of Russia, kept a diary - since all young men of breeding were expected to do so. Apparently, though, much to the sorrow of modern historians, it's a rather dull diary, full of nothing more exceptional than a painstaking list of daily business and various meals. Ah, that this journal is a Nicholas journal! (*looking furtively over the shoulder for encroaching Bolsheviks*)

Mood: My-back-hurts...but otherwise, pas mal, merci
Music: The wicked loud keyboard and the familial unit loudly bumping about upstairs
Thought: Work more on Brigadoon...make Much Ado...see if Dad's computer can make Much Ado...see if I can't get into my room...clean other one...todotodotodo.... Emily, thou art too much a Niggle!